If I'd been asked whether to buy a backpack or a laptop case a few months ago, a laptop case would have won hands down. I'd been using them for years to haul laptops around Europe.
I mean, a laptop case is specially made for carrying a laptop but a backpack is just a bottomless pit. So how will you ever find anything in a backpack?
A laptop case is small and compact. Granted trying to pile a lot of things into it can be a challenge and getting them back out again an even bigger one as everything gets tangled up. But a backpack for goodness sake!
Sure you can fit a lot of things in a backpack, but you'd have to take that all back out again to remove whatever you've buried at the bottom. And with so much more depth than a laptop case, it must make things even worse for getting things mixed up.
And what about the protection your laptop needs?
A laptop isn't some cheap disposable item you've got there and few of them will take well to being knocked about, so surely you'd want to surround it in padding and not just "drop" it into what is basically a big bag.
Of course the last time I'd used a backpack was, well, for backpacking obviously.
As far as I was concerned a backpack has a few pockets on the sides, on the front and the top but is really just one deep giant bag.
So just how on earth could a backpack be a sensible replacement for a laptop case?
Well some time after I started working permanently in the city, my opinion of backpacks completely changed.
Before that I'd been carrying my laptop over short distances. My car was in the car park right outside the office. And if I wasn't using a car then I'd be hiring taxis to get me between hotels, railway stations, other offices and airports. So as a result I wasn't really taking it very far.
But that all changed when I was forced to keep my car in a public car park. This time I was working in an office that was in the middle of the city and there was no parking there available for me. That meant the nearest car park was over twenty minutes walking distance away.
I started hauling my laptop across the city over my shoulder, taking advantage of the shoulder strap on the case, as it was really uncomfortable carrying this heavy weight by hand.
But it wasn't long before I found myself getting pains in the lower back as well as tense back muscles. I even ended up with a trapped nerve in my ribs.
When I mentioned this to a colleague he suggested getting a backpack instead.
Apparently a lot of people were complaining about having to carry a laptop in a traditional case and were asking to have it replaced with a backpack. It seemed a backpack was much more comfortable so I decided to give it a try.
Wow! What a difference!
The backpack itself felt as light as a feather. I'd been using laptop cases that when empty were almost half the carry on weight allowance for planes. I was barely managing to stay under the limit with just a laptop, mouse and power charger in it.
And the external pockets this backpack had were far more useful. I was carrying several items with wires and now they could be better spread out inside this backpack and so they were no longer getting tangled up with each other.
With a removable, padded compartment for the laptop, that fits in the centre, together with extra slots for other items this backpack was just great.
Well that was all well and good but what about the real test?
Would carrying a laptop in this backpack be more comfortable than using a laptop case?
Well after about a month my back was fine. I didn't have the trapped nerve anymore either so that was enough to convince me.
Now there is no guarantee that just changing from a laptop case to a backpack fixed all my ailments. It could be pure coincidence.
But I can tell you now that there is no way I'm going back to using a laptop case just to prove a theory.
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